"Whatever happened to all that business about "record polar melting this summer?"

Inconvenient Truth sold enough tickets and DVD copies to continue to fuel interest in Al's speaking tour, all of which made Global Warming's prophet a nice little sum, with some vicarious ability to rattle the political sabre from afar. That's all the business that needed to happen.

I've been talking to my fellow scientists about AGW for the last two years in an aggressive way. I confront them with what they know about the science and the truth is they know very little about how climatologists go about their work. My peer group is physicists and chemists. I have presented a couple of lectures to them disproving many of the methods that climatologists use. Inevitably, once I win them over, their response is, "well, it can't hurt to decrease those types of emissions." Unfortunately, this group of scientists is unaware of economic or political considerations when making this type of a statement. They also are convinced that someone who claims to be a scientist would never knowingly falsify data. I think this helps explain why the AGW crowd can drum up so many signatures from scientists.

I went to college in San Diego. There's a bit of local history there about a big drought in the early 20th century and a guy named Charlie Hatfield who claimed he could make it rain. He wrote up a contract with the city that said he'd get $10,000 if he could fill the city reservoirs. Not a dime otherwise. The city signed the contract, and he went up into the hills east of town. He built a wooden tower and started burning some sort of foul black smudge pots. Day and night he kept his pots going for a week.

Then it began to rain. And rain. And rain. The reservoir filled, then overflowed. Rivers flooded. Eventually the damn failed. Dozens of people were drowned and hundreds of houses destroyed in the flood. Hatfield went to collect his money. Instead of paying him, the city threatened to try him for murder and he barely escaped from an impromtu lynch mob that wanted to hang him.

We've been overdue for the onset of an ice age. Quite possibly the onset of the industrial revolution may have provided that small increment of warming that prevented this from happening. Or, happening as quickly. Now, with the drive to lower emissions the ice age can come on down. And, it seems it may. 20 to 50 years the whacked out liberals will be screaming for more emissions to counter the terrible cold and hunger. Wait and see.

One of the world's leading ice experts has predicted the final collapse of Arctic sea ice in summer months within four years.

In what he calls a "global disaster" now unfolding in northern latitudes as the sea area that freezes and melts each year shrinks to its lowest extent ever recorded, Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University calls for "urgent" consideration of new ideas to reduce global temperatures.

If there is warming, it's due to carbon emissions by humans. If it's cooling it's due to carbon emissions by humans. If it warms and then cools and then warms again, the erratic nature of it is due to carbon emissions by humans. If it their is virtually no change over an extended time, then it's in stasis and that is the result of carbon emissions by humans.

I suppose, warmer or colder, I am doomed to continue to hold my farts to save the planet. Though if I were in close proximity to Gore or Biden or Big O or the Lizard Queen itself ... I would feel obligated to let loose with all due prejudice.

If we could just establish a Federal Climate Regulatory Commission, they could assure that warming would be stable at @2%/year, and if the cooling factors became too excessive, they could manufacture heat at will, out of nothing, and all would be well again.

...and in 20 years, when the new ice age is debunked, the great existential threat will be...

Excessive Climate Stability

At some point the statist weenies are going to give up and move on to something less thoroughly discredited than climate crisis. Like the imminent threat from the lizard people who live at the center of the Earth.

StickwickAt some point the statist weenies are going to give up and move on to something less thoroughly discredited than climate crisis. Like the imminent threat from the lizard people who live at the center of the Earth.

Like the imminent threat from the lizard people who live at the center of the Earth.

Duh! Everybody knows the lizard people are not in the middle of the earth, but on the surface of the earth embedded within the human population and are shape shifters who live forever and take on different guises.Their handlers , however, are on an ethereal plane, and oversee the governing of events.

I am sorry to inform you of this, but the extent of your curiousity triggered an expositional event.

"Man Made" Climate change is an idea. A theory. There is no historical record of such a thing.

Ice Ages? Why, they are inevitable, cyclical and in fact the 'default' state of epochs in the geologic record. In other words, much of the geologic records gained from studying things like ice cores indicates that the cycle of climate on this planet is primarily long term ice ages interspersed by brief warming epoch's.

So.....claims of an impending ice age are far more credible or worthy of serious contemplation, than the idea that mankind's burning of carbon can drastically alter the planets climate and result in some catalyst for a climactic catastrophe.

Everybody knows the lizard people are not in the middle of the earth, but on the surface of the earth embedded within the human population and are shape shifters who live forever and take on different guises.

Hey, I heard it straight from a screwball who is an authority on this topic -- they come from the center of the Earth. There's even a MySpace page that confirms it.

Unfortunately, this group of scientists is unaware of economic or political considerations when making this type of a statement.

I find that most people aren't even aware that a perfect hydrocarbon burn yields CO2 and H2O, the inevitable end products of the reaction to release the stored energy. They think that CO2 is the byproduct of an imperfect burn like the pollutants we've reduced through better engine management and catalytic converters. Granted my discussions are generally with non-scientists, but it wouldn't surprise me to find that many scientists commit the same error in thinking.

This is why the average person is for reducing CO2 emissions even if you get them to question that man is the primary cause of global warming. They are literally clueless to the fact that a reduction in CO2 emissions means a reduction in the energy they use every day. They think it just means another device installed on their cars.

I think this helps explain why the AGW crowd can drum up so many signatures from scientists.

The petition on this topic with the most signatures is a petition questioning AGW theory.

Waterboy - you are actually correct that an increase in Antarctic sea ice does not formally disprove AGW theory.

What does formally disprove AGW theory?

* The missing tropospheric hot spot.

* The failure of climate models to correctly model the last decade.

* The complete failure of climate models to correctly model or explain Earth's climate history. AGW theory rests on the idea of positive water vapor feedbacks. If these feedbacks existed Earth should have never experienced a couple of ice ages which started during periods of very high atmospheric CO2.

I'll make this simple: the positive water vapor feedbacks do not exist. The amount of CO2 we've emitted, absent the theorized feedbacks, is simply not capable of warming the planet beyond natural variation. If we had a perfect and accurate model of Earth's climate we would find that our GHG emissions alter temperature by some fraction of 1C. That's not worth worrying about. The benefits of having the extra carbon in the biosphere far exceed any drawbacks to such small temperature variations.

You may be able to pin some events on "global warming", but that warming is driven by nature and dates back to the Little Ice Age. It is not caused by man.

H2O is a greenhouse gas. It has a structure that allows absorption and decreases re-emission. So, obviously H2O should be regulated by the government just like CO2. The general populace's ability to understand science is the ignorance the AGW crowd relies upon.

The latest CERN research has disproven the climatologists estimations on cloud formation as it relates to global cosmic rays. Short story, fewer sunspots/solar storms equals greater cloud formation/global warming. As in the sun is really, really, really big and it doesn't matter how much cows fart.

I'm not pinning anything anywhere. I only did what the original article suggested (except I used Yahoo instead of Google), and the article I linked to (which I found to contain some interesting counterpoints) is the first one that popped up. The Forbes article was third, and a television news website citing the Forbes article was second with the remainder of the first page split between other websites noting the record and sites noting the LiveScience article, so it would appear to be a problem with Google, rather than the reporting.

I make fun of all the Tree-huggers, my boss in particular. He doesn't talk to me about global warming anymore, when I made mention to him that these nuts can't get it right. In my lifetime they said a new Ice Age is coming (the Clash even sang about in in "London Calling", now that was a song), then Algore said "The planet has a fever", now it's "Climate Change". Come on people give it a rest, simply study human history and you will find that there have always been changes in the climate. Same thing with Smog in the LA Basin. Yes, back in the 70's and early 80's we had horrible smog conditions, Smog Abatement programs were put in place and now we do not. People still cry about smog, but the LA Basin is a place that even before Industrialization, there was sometimes a heavy haze over the area.

So after saying all of that, I often find myself thinking. Okay guys, you have your beautiful weather: but at what cost? In the last 30-35 years major industry has left the LA area. We used to have Kaiser Steel in Fontana, a Firestone Tire plant (close to LA), Northrop, Lockheed, a Ford plant in Van Nuys, that's just naming a few. All of these big companies are gone or they downsized drastically. I know some of it happened after the Cold War, but what do we have now? Ikea, Walmart, Starbucks, McDonalds: other than construction, these are our biggest employers. Consumer based companies. Where are the producers? They are gone. I had a conversation with my barber about this the other day. His comment to me was, "this cannot sustain itself". He doesn't have a PHD, or BA but, he can see. We went from one extreme to the other, now I can see a peasant class growing. No fun.Thank you Sierra Club. Thank you Air Quality Management District. Thank you, all you Westside nutbags.The LA that I grew up in, is gone.